Saturday, 26 January 2013

Magical Macarons

I am so happy! Like, seriously!

If you’ve read any of my posts
from when I started this blog, you may remember that I made the dramatic
decision to cut macarons out of my life FOREVER!!Yes, I was no longer going to have sleepless
nights over footless bases or cracked shells, and I was very dramatic about the
whole thing.

Well, I changed my mind.

This change of mind was a
prompted a little by my stubborn nature and my need to win at everything, a
little by my Mum’s colleagues love for macarons, but mostly by the pretty,
shiny Kitchen Aid that Santa brought me!

Look at her…. *sigh*

I was convinced that the Kitchen
Aid would be the key to successful macarons and I may have been right...

After trying my hardest with Hisako
Ogita’s recipe for macarons and not having much luck, I decided to put my Kitchen Aid to use on a different
one. This one was in a book I got for Christmas which took all the fear out of
making macarons. Much like the posts by http://bravetart.com/
(that I also tried,) it treats the macaron recipe like any other, and, it sounds
strange, but it really helped me relax into the process. I still used some
of the other tips I have picked up along the way, namely bashing the tray after
piping the macarons to knock the air out, as I think this seems to be such a
fundamental part of the process I couldn’t not do it. This recipe also called
for the macarons to rest for 30 minutes before putting them in the oven; this
allows the macarons to form a skin, and helps make the crispy outer shell when
baking.

It hurts me a little to think
that the key to my macaron success is solely based on my mixer so I am going to sy that my
recipe and less faffing also played a role. It cannot be denied, however, that the
mixer helped whisk my egg whites like never before! Oh they were beautiful!
Beautifully stiff and glossy, and full of lovely air. Wonderful.

But even after all of this I was
still doubtful. But then something amazing happened...!

I opened the oven door to turn my trays midway
through baking and I couldn’t believe my eyes: there they were all raised with
that beautiful foot right round the bottom! I could have cried! It was a
beautiful moment.

They weren’t, however, totally
perfect. In my fear of not wanting to knock out the air provided to my egg
whites by my beautiful Kitchen Aid, I was a bit too gentle when mixing in my
almond/icing sugar mix. This meant that my end batter was still quite stiff and
when I piped out my circles, I was left with little blobbies on the top that
didn’t quite settle in, and remained even after baking. But after my pied success, I wasn’t going to let this
bother me!

I may have mentioned previously that
my Mum’s work friends love macarons: they fight over them at work. So after giving them
macaron cast-offs for a while now, I was so excited to be able to give them
something that actually looked AND tasted like a macaron! :DThey had a crispy outer shell and a chewy
centre, with a sweet vanilla flavor. This was complimented by the sweet and
buttery vanilla buttercream filling.

As a result of this, I am back on
with my mission of making great (note I did not say ‘perfect’) macarons. I will
give the basic vanilla recipe another try first, being sure to give my batter a
few more folds next time and hopefully judging when I’ve got the right
consistency.

Then it’s onwards and upwards to
different colours and *gulp* flavours!